Enchanting Items
There are many ways for items to become magical as outlined in GURPS Thaumatology. GURPS Religion provides yet another alternative method. Special Note Charms or Talismans can be used to refer to an item enchanted via on the methods below or an Alchemical Magic Item but their creation and function are very different. Standard Method Note: Enchantment Costs is a listing of the spells that can be put on to items and areas via the default system. Regardless of the method the effective minimum skill required for each spell to be enchanted is 15. A roll of 16 is always a failure (quirking the item), and a roll of 17-18 is always a critical failure (destroying the item) – even if effective skill is 16+ "To perform enchantments, the caster and any assistants must know both the Enchant spell and the specific spell being put on the item at an effective skill of 15 or better. Unskilled spectators cannot contribute energy to an enchantment."GURPS Magic 16 The chance each spell will succeed with no quirks is 95.4% with not critically failing being 98.1%. However the more spells enchanted into an item the lower those chances become. The chart for Powerstone quirks in roleplayer can be used for any magic item with multiple spells on it There are two ways to do "standard" Ceremonial Magic enchantment: Quick and Dirty and Slow and Sure. Quick and Dirty This allows for the fast creation of magic items but has high energy requirements. It takes one hour per 100 points of energy required (round up) and all the energy is spent at the end of the enchantment. The caster and assistants can each have a powerstone as well as spend HP (given it lowers skill this is counter productive). However, the caster is at -1 to skill for each assistant and if his effective skill drops below 15 the enchantment will not work. At a practical level the "standard" circle is six enchanters with each enchanter providing 10 points for a total of 60 points with the main Enchanter having a skill of 20 (20-5=15). Powerstones can improve this but generally items 100+ points will use the Slow and Sure Method. Unlimited Mana changes this somewhat (Very High Mana doesn't as the energy is replenished rather then energy cost actually being zero) with the "default" being 180 over 2 hours being the practical maximum (and the enchanter and his 5 assistance will be recovering for 3 days before the next enchantment). Slow and Sure The low energy requirements is off set by the amount of time needed. It calculated in mage-days (a full eight-hour workday for one mage that produces 1 energy point) All members of the enchanting must be present for the entire process. Any missed day require two to make up and the entire project fails if a mage is lost. Industrial Industrial enchantment as an option appears at ETL6 with the assembly line itself being a enchanted item made in two ways. GURPS Technomancer/''GURPS Magic Items 3'' assembly line: The assembly line itself is a magic item "costing 10 times that to enchant whatever item it makes, multiplied by the square root of the number of mages who can work there." Per the example given "A 25-mage production line makes four-man flying carpets. Cost to enchant it would be 2,400 (cost to enchant a four-man carpet) x 10 x 5 (square root of 25) = 120,000."GURPS Technomancer 41 A carpet would be coming off the line every 9.6 days (2400/10/25). GURPS Fantasy assembly line: Limited to making one kind of item this has a energy cost twice that of setting up a magical workspace to build a prototype item, or (number of prerequisite spells +1) * (800 energy points). "It turns out one copy of the prototype in (energy cost of enchantment/4) hours. Each mage working on the line can contribute 10 energy points per working day, reducing the cost of hiring mages."GURPS Fantasy Using the four-man flying carpet (3 prerequisites) example above it would be 4,800 or 3,200 (it is not clear which) and take 600 hours (75 working days) to make (2400/4) Multiple spell success chart The number of spell castings performed before the item was destroyed is determined by the failed survival roll. The higher the roll, the sooner the item was destroyed in the process. If a 17 or 18 is roll, the item was destroyed on the first casting. If a lower number was rolled, check the survival numbers for the smaller stones; this will indicate how many castings had been successful before failure. If more than one power level has the same survival roll, pick randomly between the choices. Once you have an item that survived, roll once to find the number of Quirks that the item has; if the number you roll is equal to or less than the number in the chart, the column shows how many Quirks were introduced in the process of enchanting the item . The number pairs, such as 18/xx, are for when you roll an 18; roll again and compare to the second number of the pair. Find the column in which the second number is greater than or equal to the number you rolled. Syntactic Enchantment This is the Syntactic Magic version of enchantment and requires Symbol Drawing. "Each Word has an associated energy cost; a syntactic spell’s cost is equal to the cost of its verb plus the cost of its noun. Control spells cost an amount equal to the cost for Control plus double the cost of the noun; Transform spells cost an amount equal to the cost for Transform plus the cost for both nouns."GURPS Magic 203 Enchantment Through Age * Amplification: attracted similar energies from the ambient mana * Significance: gains power from its symbolic value and the psychic import of events in which it's involved. Enchantment Through Deeds Items gain power by being used in great events. It is faster then Significance Enchantment * Naming Objects: the naming of an item in of itself can imbue an enchantment. * Traumatic Enchantment In some cases the very act of making an item very well can enchant it though this Creation by Deed is different from deeds performed with the item. Devotional Enchantment Magic is an outgrowth of prayer, religious study, or meditation. With Devotional Enchantment a wizard can "store up" energy. While Enchanting an item is insanely quick, usually completed in a day or less, it involves Symbol Magic and the enchanter must succeed on all the skills involved or the enchantment fails entirely. If the enchantment fails the enchanter cannot retry until all of the skills associated with the failed rolls are raised. If the enchantment critically fails anywhere along the process the enchantment cannot ever be reattempted. Magic as Advantages This works best for Enchantment through Age or Deeds. Base cost is 200 hours of effort for one character point of improvement. Clerical Enchantment Clerics use Consecrate which can only be cast on items in a Very High Sanctity area but can be cast on an area of any Sanctity level. It has a counterpart called Desecrate which can render certain items powerless. Clerical magic items fall into categories: *Consecrated Objects: Example holy water *Sacred Vessels: items that contain a mixture of the cleric's and deity's power but can only be used by the cleric who created it. Effectively the clerical counterpart of a Powerstone * Holy Objects: while they are the clerical equivalent of magery based magic items they are far more time consuming to make (more clerics do not reduce the number of days to make the item) and can only be used by clerics of that deity but the item costs no energy to use. *Objects of Power: clerical magical item truly touched by the deity. Objects of Power Objects of Power come in two types: Minor (creates an area of High Sanctity within a given radius, no matter the true Sanctity of the area) and Major (Very High Sanctity within a given radius, affecting the area so strongly that even after the object has moved on, the location will remain an area of High Sanctity for 1 week per day the object was in the location). The default area is a 5-hex radius. Objects of Power have a base Power of 25 To use Christianity as an example the Ark of the Covenant would be a Major Object of Power while the Grail and Spear would more likely be Minor Objects of Power. Examples From Mythology * List of mythological objects References * GURPS Thaumatology 54, 110-113 * GURPS Religion 104-108 * The Compleat Powerstone Roleplayer #18, February 1990 Category:Concepts Category:Thaumatology